Last week was was a relatively quiet one for GBRC on the race front, but as usual many blue shirts managed to get out and about.

On Saturday, Ben Ficken (with sidekick pooch Janice), decided to forfeit the usual barcode and instead trotted down to Kent for the Bedgebury Canicross “race”. Opting for the sensibly longer 10k route, Ben and Janice both found it to be a challenging and busting up and down 2 lap course. Ben (no, oops sorry I meant Janice) literally had to stop for a bust in the woods, but they together still finished the race in a very respectable 5th place in a time of 43:44.

On Sunday, a few babes and boys in blue made their way up to the Snetterton Half Marathon, a race ran on the race track, on a fairly cold day, with “perfect conditions apart from the head wind”. Sarah Fletcher ​ran it in 1:48:25 – a great time but Sarah is still chasing that gold standard, 25 secs off! Sarah described it as a “great course if you want a pb, but quite boring”.

Tom Fowler achieved an impressive PB with a chip time of 1:29:42, managing to break sub 1:30 for the distance. Tom was very pleased as had been trying to Sub 1:30 for a while and did it on a race track. This time earned Tom a Silver Standard. Kathy Bishop ran the race in 1:51:12, which gave Kathy a well earned 3rd in her age category.
Kevin Stevens ran well too by Tom’s account, and is getting back to his best.
Also on the Sunday, was the Chelmsford 10k.

Scott Young finished well under 50 minutes, in 48:13 a time Scott said said he was happy with; rightly so, as this put Scott on the new year club championships leaderboard 🙂 . Claudia Keitch also ran the race very well, finishing in 56.13, and was very pleased in knocking 3 minutes off her previous 10k time. Again, this time put Claudia on the club
championships leaderboard:). Scott and Claudia described the race as a great course, ran out round villages in Chelmsford, but but would dispute the course description of 1 hill near the end “the end must have been in sight about 10 times!” said Scott.

Colchester Castle Park run – the hill of Colchester was the most popular GBRC parkrunners this week, with 8 blue shirts. Debs Cubberley and Paul Hollidge were initially running together, but Paul felt like being sociable and chatting to Charlie Keitch and Scott Young; Deb was having none of this and ditched Paul, and subsequently ran herself a course PB (26.05). Paul finished with (26.09), Scott with (26.10). Charlie Keitch, in his 100th park run, stopped chatting and finished with (25.46) but unfortunately has now picked up an injury, having had a fantastic last few months running – beware the dreaded runner of the month curse ! Richard Moor continued on the comeback trail and was first Bentley finisher with (24.28), James Mcullagh ran his 96th park run in (25.39), and Mags Komorowska and Tomasz Komorowski both finished in ( 26.15 ).

The seafront at Clacton again had a good turnout in blue – the seemingly ever present and speedy Ray Baggs was second finisher in (19.51). Other GBRC finishers all with good performances were Andy Stephens with a top 10 (finishing 9th position) in (22.19), Kevin James very close to under 23 minutes with (23.06), Brain Telford (23.37) Alison Clark (31.37) and David Nugent (45.46).

All the way down on the south coast at Hastings, Nick Goodman “battled” to a speedy (21.39) – Nick was very pleased with a new PB and top 20 finish position, managing to get under 22min for 5k, achieving his year end target.

At Harwich this week, the club were solely represented by Matthew Knowles (24.11) , finishing in 31st place.

The delightful Cudmore grove park and woodland run at Mersea had three Bentley representatives this week; Belinda Palmer Barnes finished as 9th female in (29.35) John Bush finished in (33.42). Luke Groves, having ran well at “out and back” training at Abbey Fields the night before, kept up the good form on Saturday, finishing in (26.09).
Junior Park Run on the Sunday 19th. There were 5 of our junior members at the Old Heath recreation ground in Colchester on Sunday (total runners 100) ; Yasmin Leek finished with (15.01) George Jones (14.27), Isabella Jones (14.19) , Rufus Keitch ran it in (13.36). Angel Jasper was first Bentley junior home, finishing in (10.20) in 21st place. Well done all , keep up the good work.

[Kathy Bishop and Sarah Fletcher motoring it around Snetterton on Sunday]